Sun Grows Cold? RS Suggests a Rate Cut

Via the Observer we learn that the New York Sun is pulling an Oral Roberts and threatening to leave the temporal plane if it does not get money, possibly by late September. In a message to its readers today, after bragging about how great the Sun is -- even David Remnick likes it! -- and about how much its ad revenues have increased over the past few years, Editor Seth Lipsky announces that "the Sun has yet to achieve its financial goal of making a profit" after six years of operation.

You'd think a paper devoted to conservative free-market principles would, after such a shameful admission, slink off to the dustbin of history. Instead Lipsky announces that "we are scrambling to find others who share this vision and the sense of possibility" -- that is, backers who wouldn't mind losing money to keep the Sun shining.

Some might expect that the Sun will ask its upscale readership to pay more for it, but this conflicts with the paper's basic principles, which suggest an alternative course. In July of last year a Sun editorial praised "the economic growth set off by the Bush tax cuts," and said that the added income enjoyed by the government from capital gains enabled by the cuts proved "that a rate cut can more than pay for itself." Perhaps the Sun will follow its own counsel, cut the price of the paper, and wait for the ensuing windfall.